On Thursday at the Web 2.0 Summit Sean Parker gave a presentation entitled “The New Era of the Network Service.” In it, he argues that so-called “network services” like Facebook (which he helped start) and Twitter will soon dominate the web, rather than “information services” like Google and Yahoo. MG hailed Parker’s presentation as important and interesting. I saw the presentation quite differently.

Google is in fact the greatest benefactor of Network Services the world has ever seen. Google’s core product, search, is built around network theory. Why doesn’t Google get credit then? Because it is difficult to envision Google’s network. The Internet, the whole gigantic, enormous Internet is Google’s network. Look no further than an early research paper concerning Google’s PageRank.

Websites are distinct locations. Users move between sites via links randomly. To find influential sites, Google looks for the web pages which people link to the most for any given topic. That is the fundamental principal behind PageRank; the Internet is a network of nodes (sites) and transitions (links). The same fundamental idea explains networks of people. People are the nodes and communications are the transitions. To find influential people you want to see which people are cited, quoted, heard, talked to (kinda sounds like Twitter RTs, followers, @replies?). The underlying network principles are the same in both cases.

While PageRank is no longer at the core of Google Search, you can rest assured that Google still makes extensive use of network theory. Google’s “information service” is in applying that network analysis and combining it with consumer perspective to give users relevant information. Google’s data is network data.

Facebook and Twitter do a great job connecting people, an area where Google has fallen behind. The strongest influences on people are the people around them: friends, family, colleagues. Hosting those connections is extremely valuable.

Both sides (Google and Twitter/Facebook) have a problem they need to solve. Facebook and Twitter host the connections but they have yet to develop Google’s network technology that delivers the most relevant content to users. Google’s problem is that they have not been able to crawl Twitter (until recently) and Facebook and apply their network technology.

Facebook and Twitter are furiously working to solve their problem. Twitter is working on search, and also has licensed its fire hose to Bing and Google. Facebook is rapidly incorporating filtering features. It is unclear how close either company is to succeeding. Google, on the other hand, is rapidly working to make its products more social and also to get around the walls that close off Facebook and Twitter.

I completely agree that Facebook will challenge Google and might win, but Google is certainly a network service. Search and the technology behind it is difficult and expensive to maintain. Yahoo threw in the towel, and while Bing is making inroads, Google is the only company that matters in the category. While Google might not have a “modern social network” the company is harvesting more data about each of us than anyone else.

Between all of Google’s services it can potentially know a lot about us: our search patterns (google.com), email/contacts (Gmail), photos (Picasa), calls (Voice), all phone activity (Android), video (YouTube), comments (SideWiki), all browsing/app use (Chrome/Chrome OS), even our electricity use (PowerMeter). They can tie all of that data to a single identity for many users. In my mind that’s way more extensive then any social network.

I wouldn’t bet against Google.